Kane spent much of the rest of the evening vigorously defending his use of the term, at one point tweeting that people who were objecting were being "overly sensitive.

"It’s unreal how some of you on here turn absolutely nothing into something so wrong... As I have said before and I’ll say it again if you can’t handle real talk #clickunfollow if you can’t handle it."

Kane also retweeted multiple followers over the course of the evening who had tweeted him in support.

But late Thursday night, Kane issued an apology after he said he spoke with Patrick Burke of the organization You Can Play, a group which supports gay athletes.

"Just spoke with Patrick Burke and @YouCanPlayTeam and would like to sincerely apologize for a tweet where I used a homophobic term. I made... a mistake and will learn from this. I apologize to anyone I offended by my tweet and this will not happen again. #YouCanPlay."

It’s just the latest incident in which Kane has gotten himself into trouble with a controversial tweet from his personal account and came on the very same day the Jets announced he had surgery on his foot to repair some nerve damage.

Kane had deleted the tweet by late Thursday.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek

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